After transporting a collection of impressionist paintings from their Hamptons home to their Manhattan apartment, a New York Family woke up to find their beloved art work had been accidentally thrown away.
According to The New York Times, the family had left the last batch of packing to a maid who accidentally tossed the valuable impressionist paintings. The mishap was not discovered until the family had prepped the walls for the artwork only to realize they were down four pieces.
“They scrambled around the next day, looking everywhere,” said Colin Quinn, director of claims management in the United States for Axa Art Insurance. “At the end of the day, they reported it to us.”
The maid had worked for the family for more than 10 years. The conclusion was that the paintings, still in their crates, had ended up in the trash, he said. They were long gone by the time the insurance investigators arrived.
This comes just after a woman fell into a rare Picasso at the MET. Evidently, artistic “oops” moments aren’t as rare as you think. A painting by Giorgio de Chirico, “Piazza d’Italia,” was hanging on the wall of a townhouse in the Netherlands when demolition began on a bank next door. The wrecking ball came through the wall of the house and shot a perfect hole through the canvas. In Germany, a Ming dynasty lacquer plate — about 600 years old — was hit by a housekeeper’s elbow and ended up in bits on the ground. And one night at Tavern on the Green in 1995, Jean Kennedy Smith, then the American ambassador to Ireland, was being honored by Irish America magazine for her work bringing about a cease-fire in Northern Ireland. To commemorate the event, a piece of Waterford crystal was carved in the shape of an American flag with eagles. Before anyone could get their hands on the crystal, however, a speaker heading for the podium brushed past the sculpture and it toppled off the back of the stage.
